The New York Times published a front-page article on August 16 reporting that the US Justice Department is preparing to end a ten-month criminal investigation into the collapse of the Wall Street brokerage firm MF Global without charging the company or any of its employees.

This is despite what the Times called the “disappearance” of some $1 billion in customer money that emerged when the firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last October 31. MF Global raided clients’ accounts in an attempt to meet margin calls in the days leading up to its collapse. The newspaper reports that $175 million of this stolen money went to JPMorgan Chase.

The failure of the firm, on the other hand, left “farmers and other customers out millions,” according to the Times report.

Nevertheless, the company and its former chairman and CEO Jon Corzine are likely to be given a free pass by the government. The Times cited “people involved in the case who spoke on condition of anonymity,” making clear that news of the government whitewash had been deliberately leaked, presumably in an effort to prepare public opinion and dampen popular outrage.

The Times is no doubt also motivated by concerns over the impact on the Obama reelection campaign of yet another official cover-up of Wall Street criminality, given that Corzine is a former Democratic senator and governor of New Jersey and a top fundraiser for the Obama campaign. He hosted Obama’s first reelection fund-raising event at his Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking Central Park in Manhattan.

Failure to prosecute the multi-millionaire Goldman Sachs CEO (1994-1999)- turned Democratic office-holder will create difficulties for a campaign based — absurdly and cynically — on casting Obama as a quasi-populist alternative to his pro-Wall Street opponent.

Jacob Rothschild, John Paulson And George Soros Are All Betting That Financial Disaster Is ComingMichael Snyder, ContributorTuesday, August 21, 2012Activist Post

Are you willing to bet against three of the wealthiest men in the entire world? Jacob Rothschild recently bet approximately 200 million dollars that the euro will go down. Billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson made somewhere around 20 billion dollars betting against the U.S. housing market during the last financial crisis, and now he has made huge bets that the euro will go down and that the price of gold will go up. And as I wrote about in my last article, George Soros put approximately 130 million more dollars into gold last quarter.

So will the euro plummet like a rock? Will the price of gold absolutely soar? Well, if a massive financial disaster does occur, both of those two things are likely to happen. The European economy is becoming more unstable with each passing day, and investors all over the globe are looking for safe places to put their money. The mainstream media keeps telling us that everything is going to be okay, but the global elite are sending us a much, much different message by their actions.

Certainly Rothschild, Paulson and Soros know about things happening in the financial world that the rest of us don't. The fact that they are all behaving in a consistent manner right now should be alarming for all of us.CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

As congressional support builds for a federal internet sales tax law, online shoppers in Pennsylvania and California will pony up to the taxman next month.

Starting Sept. 1, Pennsylvanians will pay a 6 percent or more sales tax, depending on the county, for online items purchased from retailers with a physical presence in the state, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.

The new tax is an attempt to collect some of the $254 million to $410 million (according to a 2011 study by Carnegie Mellon University professor Robert Strauss) in lost revenue from the state's online shoppers. It would apply to all purchases made in, delivered to or used within the state.

California e-tailers will start charging customers a sales tax Sept. 15 under a new state law that could boost the state’s coffers by $250 million to $500 million, ABC affiliate KFSN-TV reports.CONTINUE + VIDEO: [link to www.abajournal.com]

Two landmark developments on August 16th give momentum to the growing interest of cities and counties in addressing the mortgage crisis using eminent domain:

(1) The Washington State Supreme Court held in Bain v. MERS, et al., that an electronic database called Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) is not a “beneficiary” entitled to foreclose under a deed of trust; and

(2) San Bernardino County, California, passed a resolution to consider plans to use eminent domain to address the glut of underwater borrowers by purchasing and refinancing their loans.

MERS is the electronic smokescreen that allowed banks to build their securitization Ponzi scheme without worrying about details like ownership and chain of title. According to trial attorney Neil Garfield, properties were sold to multiple investors or conveyed to empty trusts, subprime securities were endorsed as triple A, and banks earned up to 40 times what they could earn on a paying loan, using credit default swaps in which they bet the loan would go into default.

As the dust settles from collapse of the scheme, homeowners are left with underwater mortgages with no legitimate owners to negotiate with. The solution now being considered is for municipalities to simply take ownership of the mortgages through eminent domain. This would allow them to clear title and start fresh, along with some other lucrative dividends.

Chart Of The Day: Americans At Or Below 125% Of The Poverty Levelby Tyler DurdenAugust 23, 2012

From AP: "the number of Americans with incomes at or below 125 percent of the federal poverty level - the income limit for qualifying for legal aid - is expected to reach an all-time high of 66 million this year. A family of four earning 125 percent of the federal poverty level makes about $28,800 a year, government figures show." And visually...

In June of 2012, Eric Bloom, former chief executive, and Charles Mosely, head trader of Sentinel Management Group (SMG) were indicted for stealing $500 million in customer secured funds. Both Mosely and Bloom were accused of “exposing” customer segregated funds “to a portfolio of highly risky derivatives.”

These customer funds were used to “back up personal investments” which were part of “collateral for a loan from Bank of New York Mellon” (BNYM). This loan derived from stolen customer monies was “used to purchase millions of dollars worth of high-risk, illiquid securities, including collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, for a trading portfolio that benefited Sentinel’s officers, including Mosley, Bloom and certain Bloom family members.”

Fast forward to August 9th of 2012, and the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals (CCA) rules that BNYM can be moved to first in line of creditors over the customers that had their funds stolen by SMG.

Krugman also says: A funny thing happened on the way to economic Armageddon: Iceland’s very desperation made conventional behavior impossible, freeing the nation to break the rules. Where everyone else bailed out the bankers and made the public pay the price, Iceland let the banks go bust and actually expanded its social safety net. Where everyone else was fixated on trying to placate international investors, Iceland imposed temporary controls on the movement of capital to give itself room to maneuver.

Krugman is right. Letting the banks go bust – instead of perpetually bailing them out – is the right way to go.

We’ve previously noted: Iceland told the banks to pound sand. And Iceland’s economy is doing much better than virtually all of the countries which have let the banks push them around.

War, economic collapse, and personal devastation await Americans no matter who they vote for - and what we should do instead.

A vote for Obama will bring war with Syria, Iran, and eventually Russia and China. The economy will continue to suffer in order to bolster the interests of off-shore corporate-financier interests, while the collective prospects of Americans continue to whither and blow away. A vote for Romney, however, will also bring war with Syria, Iran, and eventually Russia and China. The economy will also continue to suffer in order to bolster the interests of off-shore corporate-financier interests, while the collective prospects of Americans continue to whither and blow away. Why?

Because the White House is but a public relations front for the corporate-financier interests of Wall Street and London. A change of residence at the White House is no different than say, British Petroleum replacing its spokesman to superficially placate public opinion when in reality the exact same board of directors, overall agenda, and objectives remain firmly in place. Public perception then is managed by, not the primary motivation of, corporate-financier interests.

It is the absolute folly to believe that multi-billion dollar corporate-financier interests would subject their collective fate to the whims of the ignorant, uninformed, and essentially powerless voting masses every four years. Instead, what plays out every four years is theater designed to give the general public the illusion that they have some means of addressing their grievances without actually ever changing the prevailing balance of power in any meaningful way.

The foreign policy of both Obama and Romney is written by the exact same corporate-financier funded think-tanks that have written the script for America's destiny for the last several decades.

Hervé Falciani is the 40-year-old computer technician who provided several European governments access to files listing the names of the thousands of their citizens evading taxes via bank accounts at HSBC's Swiss affiliate. Arrested in Barcelona in late July, he is awaiting extradition to Switzerland. Excerpts.Manuel Altozano

He did not have to look far to find them. They were there, on his computer screen, the one he worked at for six years at HSBC's Geneva headquarters.

Hervé Falciani was responsible for upgrading client databases in one of the world's largest banks and the information to which he had access in October 2006 was priceless. The data, protected by Switzerland's sacrosanct secrecy laws, concerned millionaire depositers' accounts left to blossom over the course of years thanks to covert transfers and financial flows of doubtful, but untraceable, origins.

Previous estimates relied more on rough judgments. TJN used several methods. They include available data sources, estimation methods, and core assumptions. They're open to peer review and public scrutiny.

Previous estimates relied more on rough judgments. TJN used several methods. They include available data sources, estimation methods, and core assumptions. They're open to peer review and public scrutiny.

Thanks Roxy for always keeping us "in the know."Anyway to beat the system?

Quoting: Renegade (Me too)

I'm afraid it's too late, unless 'we' are prepared to start a revolution much like the French Revolution.

What I do know is that TPTB are pretty convinced the 'end' is near, as they don't make any attempt to even try to fix the financial system.

Quoting: RoXY

Whilst capitalism may well be showing its late stage crisis profile, I am not sure that we have quite arrived there in terms of a complete shift away from this mode of resource usage. For one, the level of political consciousness is still inclined to view capitalism as warranting repair. Whereas this is what capitalism is, objectively. No matter who tinkers with capital's processes, it will always devolve to this style of wealth consolidation with all the characteristics of cronyism.

Until we arrive, collectively, as a species, at some critical mass in the way we understand this system and its natural propensities, we will continue to attempt to repair it, and each new incarnation (if you can call it "new") will generate even more acute troughs of crises than the one before.

Workers of the World, Unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!

The Great Recession and its Implications: Tax the Rich or Privatize the State?by Shamus CookeAugust 27, 2012The Great Recession and its possible continuance has brought the issue of privatization to the forefront of American politics. But most Americans aren't even aware that this debate is happening, because the media and politicians aren't using the word "privatization;” instead less threatening substitutes are used to ram through a corporate agenda that aims to massively transform public resources into corporate profit.

The mass privatization frenzy is the corporate solution to the budget crises occurring on the city, state, and national level — crises caused by the recession that the banks and corporations created themselves, and are now positioning themselves to benefit from again, beyond the infamous bailouts.

The effects of the recession will continue for years, and the already slowing economy is exacerbating these effects, most notably the bankrupting of government budgets. Politicians from the Democratic and Republican parties both holler that "there is no money,” and therefore massive cuts have to be made to public services, while public employees must either be laid off or have their wages destroyed.

But another corporate solution to this corporate-caused problem is now proceeding full speed ahead: Urban Infrastructure Banks. Under this scheme, the funding of publicly-run infrastructure — roads, bridges, public buildings, etc. — will be taken out of the public realm and transferred to the corporations, who will fund these projects as long as they profit from them.

The Great Recession and its Implications: Tax the Rich or Privatize the State?by Shamus CookeAugust 27, 2012The Great Recession and its possible continuance has brought the issue of privatization to the forefront of American politics. But most Americans aren't even aware that this debate is happening, because the media and politicians aren't using the word "privatization;” instead less threatening substitutes are used to ram through a corporate agenda that aims to massively transform public resources into corporate profit.

The mass privatization frenzy is the corporate solution to the budget crises occurring on the city, state, and national level — crises caused by the recession that the banks and corporations created themselves, and are now positioning themselves to benefit from again, beyond the infamous bailouts.

The effects of the recession will continue for years, and the already slowing economy is exacerbating these effects, most notably the bankrupting of government budgets. Politicians from the Democratic and Republican parties both holler that "there is no money,” and therefore massive cuts have to be made to public services, while public employees must either be laid off or have their wages destroyed.

But another corporate solution to this corporate-caused problem is now proceeding full speed ahead: Urban Infrastructure Banks. Under this scheme, the funding of publicly-run infrastructure — roads, bridges, public buildings, etc. — will be taken out of the public realm and transferred to the corporations, who will fund these projects as long as they profit from them.

Excellent article Roxy. Illustrates the central paradox of capital...with each crisis, the cause is applied as the remedy leading to an even more acuter next crisis and so on and so forth.

On a practical level, the complete destruction of the common impulses that equip all beings with the basic tools for survival marks humankind for a transformation of the likes we are not really equipped for and at best, we can only speculate as to what will emerge. If the self-obsessed elites are anything to go by, the future looks grim indeed.

Workers of the World, Unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!

Is There Going To Be A Stock Market Crash In The Fall?Michael Snyder, ContributorWednesday, August 29, 2012Activist Post

Is the stock market going to crash by the end of this year? Are we on the verge of major financial chaos on a global scale? Well, this is the time of the year when investors start getting nervous. We all remember what happened during the fall of 1929, the fall of 1987 and the fall of 2008. However, it is important to keep in mind that we do not see a stock market crash in the fall of every year. Some years the stock market cruises through the months of September, October, November and December without any problems whatsoever. But this year conditions certainly seem to be right for a "perfect storm" to develop.

Technical indicators are screaming that a stock market decline is imminent and sources in the financial industry all over the world are warning that a massive crisis is on the way. What you are about to read should alarm you. But it is not a guarantee that anything will or will not happen. When Ben Bernanke gives his speech at the Jackson Hole summit on Friday he could announce to the rest of the world that the Federal Reserve has decided to launch QE3 and that the Fed will be printing up trillions of new dollars. If that happened global financial markets would leap for joy. So it is always a dangerous thing when anyone out there tries to tell you that they can "guarantee" what is about to happen in the financial world.

American Middle Class Being Compressed Out of Existenceby Charles ScaligerWednesday, 29 August 2012

The record is becoming clearer and clearer: The Great Recession and its persistent aftermath have dealt the American middle class a blow from which it may take a generation to recover. For the last decade, household incomes have been declining steadily, according to a new report by Sentier Research, a respected Washington-area think tank.

Much of the damage has been done since the official end of the Great Recession. From June 2009 to June 2012, median household income fell 4.8 percent, to just under $51,000. This represents a continuation of the middle-class hollowing out that has been underway since the beginning of the last decade. The Great Recession itself caused median household income to decline by 2.6 percent, and since January 2000, when it stood at more than $55,000, household income has declined by 8.1 percent.

Worse still is the two decades-old erosion of median net worth. American households’ net worth has declined from an all-time 2007 high of $126,400 to a mere $77,300 only three years later — roughly what it was all the way back in 1992, at the beginning of the ‘90s tech stock boom. In other words, America has lost an entire generation’s worth of economic growth courtesy of the Great Recession, and isn’t likely to regain it in the foreseeable future.CONTINUE: [link to thenewamerican.com]

American Middle Class Being Compressed Out of Existenceby Charles ScaligerWednesday, 29 August 2012

The record is becoming clearer and clearer: The Great Recession and its persistent aftermath have dealt the American middle class a blow from which it may take a generation to recover. For the last decade, household incomes have been declining steadily, according to a new report by Sentier Research, a respected Washington-area think tank.

Much of the damage has been done since the official end of the Great Recession. From June 2009 to June 2012, median household income fell 4.8 percent, to just under $51,000. This represents a continuation of the middle-class hollowing out that has been underway since the beginning of the last decade. The Great Recession itself caused median household income to decline by 2.6 percent, and since January 2000, when it stood at more than $55,000, household income has declined by 8.1 percent.

Worse still is the two decades-old erosion of median net worth. American households’ net worth has declined from an all-time 2007 high of $126,400 to a mere $77,300 only three years later — roughly what it was all the way back in 1992, at the beginning of the ‘90s tech stock boom. In other words, America has lost an entire generation’s worth of economic growth courtesy of the Great Recession, and isn’t likely to regain it in the foreseeable future.CONTINUE: [link to thenewamerican.com]

Quoting: RoXY

The middle class is a Cold War myth. With the fall of the progressive forces of scientific socialism, there is nothing restraining the capitalist from fully implementing cost efficient capitalism, one which marries consumerism with global labour cost standardisation (benchmarked in low cost zones such as China and India.)

Workers of the World, Unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!

Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital - How the GOP presidential candidate and his private equity firm staged an epic wealth grab, destroyed jobs – and stuck others with the billby: Matt TaibbiAugust 29, 2012

The great criticism of Mitt Romney, from both sides of the aisle, has always been that he doesn't stand for anything. He's a flip-flopper, they say, a lightweight, a cardboard opportunist who'll say anything to get elected.

The critics couldn't be more wrong. Mitt Romney is no tissue-paper man. He's closer to being a revolutionary, a backward-world version of Che or Trotsky, with tweezed nostrils instead of a beard, a half-Windsor instead of a leather jerkin. His legendary flip-flops aren't the lies of a bumbling opportunist – they're the confident prevarications of a man untroubled by misleading the nonbeliever in pursuit of a single, all-consuming goal. Romney has a vision, and he's trying for something big: We've just been too slow to sort out what it is, just as we've been slow to grasp the roots of the radical economic changes that have swept the country in the last generation.

The incredible untold story of the 2012 election so far is that Romney's run has been a shimmering pearl of perfect political hypocrisy, which he's somehow managed to keep hidden, even with thousands of cameras following his every move. And the drama of this rhetorical high-wire act was ratcheted up even further when Romney chose his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin – like himself, a self-righteously anal, thin-lipped, Whitest Kids U Know penny pincher who'd be honored to tell Oliver Twist there's no more soup left. By selecting Ryan, Romney, the hard-charging, chameleonic champion of a disgraced-yet-defiant Wall Street, officially succeeded in moving the battle lines in the 2012 presidential race.

Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital - How the GOP presidential candidate and his private equity firm staged an epic wealth grab, destroyed jobs – and stuck others with the billby: Matt TaibbiAugust 29, 2012

The great criticism of Mitt Romney, from both sides of the aisle, has always been that he doesn't stand for anything. He's a flip-flopper, they say, a lightweight, a cardboard opportunist who'll say anything to get elected.

The critics couldn't be more wrong. Mitt Romney is no tissue-paper man. He's closer to being a revolutionary, a backward-world version of Che or Trotsky, with tweezed nostrils instead of a beard, a half-Windsor instead of a leather jerkin.

Morgan Stanley is Insolvent – Only a Matter of Time Before Total Financial CollapseSusanne Posel, ContributorThursday, August 30, 2012Activist Post

The fall of the House of Morgan has begun as stock prices on the global market at Morgan Stanley (MS) begin to fall on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

According to Rick Wiles: “I’m hearing rumors that another major financial house is going to implode. In fact, the name I’ve been given is Morgan Stanley. It’s going to be put on the sacrificial alter by the financial elite.”

MS, technically speaking, is classified as insolvent based on mark-to-market valuation. By selling off non-core assets, MS has been able to “reduce its European exposure” through the manipulation of hedge funds and allocation of funds to failing financial corporations. Some mainstream media outlets tout that the Federal Reserve Bank will come in and assist MS in their insolvency and that MS “just isn’t going out of business anytime soon.”CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

18 Indications That Europe Is An Economic Black Hole That Will Suck The Life Out Of The Global EconomyMichael Snyder, ContributorTuesday, September 4, 2012Activist Post

Summer vacation is over and things are about to get very interesting in Europe. Most Americans don't realize this, but much of Europe shuts down for the entire month of August. I wish we had something similar in the United States. But now millions of Europeans are returning from their extended family vacations and the fun is about to begin.

During August, economic conditions continued to degenerate in Europe, but I figured that it wouldn't be until after August that the European debt crisis would take center stage once again. And as I wrote about last week, if there is going to be a financial panic, it typically happens in the fall.

The stock market has seen quite a nice rally over the summer, and many investors are nervous that we could see a significant "correction" very soon. The month of September has been the absolute worst month for stock performance over the past 50 years, and it has also been the absolute worst month for stock performance over the past 100 years as well. Of course that does not guarantee that anything is going to happen this year. But things in Europe continue to get worse. Unemployment rates are spiking, manufacturing activity is slowing down, housing prices are crashing and major financial institutions are failing. What is happening in Europe right now appears to be an even worse version of what happened to the United States back in 2008.

With any move made by the globalist controllers and their surrogates of the Anglo-American NATO strong arm, it is safe to assume that there is rarely only one reason for the implementation of any given plan. Thus, the wars of conquest and aggression raging in the Middle East, “Eurasia,” and Africa are by no means working toward one purpose alone.

Ever since the invasion of Afghanistan eleven years ago, a small but increasing number of brave journalists, researchers, and activists have been decrying the real reasons for the destruction of entire nations and the tragic loss of life imposed by the hands of NATO and other Anglo-American forces such as the puppet regimes located in the same regions as the target countries. Among these vassal states are the remnants of feudal monarchies like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and others.

The official underreporting of the unemployment statistics is a well-known fact. The cavalier dismissal of the systemic dismantling of the market economy by the Obama administration is undeniable. Notwithstanding, the lack of living wage jobs is not simply a partisan issue. Ever since the adoption of the globalist free trade betrayal, the national suicide of the free enterprise economy has continued. Transiting skilled employees into government dependents is an overt component of the “New Age” of reduced wealth and servitude for the ordinary American.

Consider the logic of the consequences of off shoring our manufacturing base. Once the jobs are gone, the prospects for good paying substitution jobs become rare. Without the ability to sell value added products generated from meaningful margins, affording generous pay scales of a prosperous middle class is impossible.

The official underreporting of the unemployment statistics is a well-known fact. The cavalier dismissal of the systemic dismantling of the market economy by the Obama administration is undeniable. Notwithstanding, the lack of living wage jobs is not simply a partisan issue. Ever since the adoption of the globalist free trade betrayal, the national suicide of the free enterprise economy has continued. Transiting skilled employees into government dependents is an overt component of the “New Age” of reduced wealth and servitude for the ordinary American.

Consider the logic of the consequences of off shoring our manufacturing base. Once the jobs are gone, the prospects for good paying substitution jobs become rare. Without the ability to sell value added products generated from meaningful margins, affording generous pay scales of a prosperous middle class is impossible.

This article speaks of confusion of epic proportions. On the one hand, speaking of the market economy, and on the other, construing this paradigm from a simplistic nationalism.

Then decrying the globalising of the capital that outflows from this market for the loss this brings to premium cost labour...when the market, for being private, constantly seeks options for settling within lower labour cost zones (as a consequence of the natural withering of the state (or market driven state minimilisation.))

The final tragedy is in failing to recognise that these are the early days in the standardisation of global living standards for the labouring classes, whilst ensuring both their continued capacity to deliver labour surplus as well as their continued ability to transform this surplus as consumer.

Workers of the World, Unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!

Friday’s payroll jobs report says that 96,000 new jobs were created in August and that the unemployment rate (U.3) fell from 8.3% to 8.1%. As 96,000 new jobs are not enough to keep up with population growth, the decline in the U.3 unemployment rate was caused by 368,000 discouraged job seekers giving up on finding employment and dropping out of the work force as measured by U.3.

Discouraged workers are not included in the U.3 measure of unemployment, which makes the measure useless. The only purpose of U.3 is to keep bad news out of the news. the U.3 unemployment rate only measures those who have not been discouraged by the inability to find a job and are still actively seeking employment.

The government produces another unemployment measure, U.6, which includes people who have been discouraged by the inability to find a job and have been out of the work force for less than a year. This measure of unemployment is 14.7%, a number that would get attention if reported.